Washington Square - Essay

Washington Square

In mid-19th century New York, Dr. Sloper, a fashionable physician, resents his daughter Catherine because her mother died in childbirth and the girl lacks her mother’s wit and beauty. Catherine has never had a beau until a handsome, charming young man named Morris Townsend makes advances to her. When she falls overwhelmingly in love with Morris, Dr. Sloper investigates and finds that the suitor is a penniless fortune hunter who hopes to gain Catherine’s considerable inheritance.

The doctor orders her to break off the relationship; but, though ordinarily dutiful, she refuses. Dr. Sloper, who scorns his daughter, is at first amused by her resistance. To his surprise and increasing exasperation, she remains firm in her attachment to Morris, even when her father takes her away to Europe. Part of the doctor’s opposition to Morris is the fact that they are much alike, and indeed Dr. Sloper got most of his wealth not from his practice but from his wife.

Resisting her father, Catherine develops a will of her own and stands up to him. Unable to love her himself, the doctor considers his daughter unlovable. Gradually becoming aware of this, she clings all the more to Morris, only to have him jilt her when the doctor threatens to disinherit her. Unwilling to let her father dominate her, Catherine refuses to promise not to marry Morris, though she is now through with him, and she is disinherited except for a moderate income from her mother. When...